I'm sick and tired of the way my employer, "The State" handles promotions, pay, and extras, etc (for example, the window cube that opens up).

Nevermind how hard you work, or how much work you do while you're peers sit around and do nothing. Nevermind how well you know your job. Nevermind the initiative you take or the fact that you actually care about your users.

All that matters is "time in service".

It's so depressing and kills any motivation to try to do as well as you know you should and could. Because while you're kickin' butt, the guy next to you who does nothing (and knows NOTHING about his job), gets the promotion because he "qualifies" - since he's been around for years. Of course, he still comes to you for help with everything he DOES get assigned to do. But, he doesn't share that fat paycheck.

has anyone noticed that the new live messenger installer crashes left right and centre?? i've tried using amsn but now that is crashing too! and i know pidgin is out there (i've used it on ubuntu) but that just doesn't have the same cool GUIness of live messenger (or amsn to a lesser extent). I'd be a happy chappy if only amsn worked! i mean amsn does all the same stuff as live messenger!

yeah i feel that problem, the only way you are aware of a new message is when u leave the sounds on (the most annoying sounds ever). More then once i've been chatting to someone while watching a youtube vid only to notice the little orange speach bubble after a while and when i click back to the convo it's basically:

so please pidgin make the message notification a little more visually obvious (but not obtrusive, just something like every other IM client). And actually spice up ur GUI a tad (instead of looking like a native windows 98 app or an early xp app)

Bah! Some days I wonder why I would ever choose to develop with Microsoft technologies.

Stupid SharePoint API doesn't allow you to access list fields by internal name. You can get them by display name, though. How friggin' stupid is that? Any user with Contribute access to the list can change the Display Name. Internal name is set and uneditable...well, at least to the common user. Wouldn't it make more sense to use an identifier that CAN'T CHANGE?!??!

This is typical of them. Come up with a great idea like SharePoint, but fail to put some common sense into the API.

I won't even get started on the SDK that had all of 2 tech writers working on it (as you can guess, it's not very in depth).

Oh...I remember why I picked MS...I hate JAVA and C++. Unfortunately, I'll have to pick up JAVA again so I can tinker with my Dream.

The teachers I had for JAVA and C++ were useless. The JAVA and C++3 teacher wouldn't provide any help when asked. I would go to him with questions about JAVA assignments and he would ask what I thought should be done? Well, I already tried what I THOUGHT, jackass, that's why I'm here.

My C++2 teacher was a Chinese woman who literally used another professor's syllabus/lesson plan. She even had the audacity to leave that teacher's name on all of the presentation materials. Talk about lazy.

I ended up failing JAVA because I couldn't get the projects done on time (I was taking C++3, senior project class where I did all of the development, and ASP.NET class). Thankfully the department head let me take a DB class at another school to count as a credit.

It's rather nice that Visual Studio does a lot of the menial tasks for me. I shouldn't have to hand-code control signatures or ASP.NET control markup.

Dish Network employs call centers overseas. That's not exactly a revelation, but it really sucks when they don't even understand what programming they offer.

I was trying to order NHL Center Ice yesterday. The first time I called, I went through all the crap and the guy told me I couldn't order it until 10.10. Uh...NO!! I know plenty of people who have. In fact, that's the last day for the early registration. He probably thought that is what the date meant.

The second time I just had to repeat "NHL Center Ice" 5 times, but at least that guy finally found it. Then, I ask the question about what the channels for CI are. He just tells me 1 channel. I'm pretty sure it's several channels, but he swore it was one. Well, how am I supposed to get up to 40 LIVE games a week with only one channel?! 2 games (at most) per night times 7 only equals 14. So, my guess is that there is more than one channel.

The teachers I had for JAVA and C++ were useless. The JAVA and C++3 teacher wouldn't provide any help when asked. I would go to him with questions about JAVA assignments and he would ask what I thought should be done? Well, I already tried what I THOUGHT, jackass, that's why I'm here.

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I've never taken a computer class in my life; I've learned everything from Z80 assembler and Forth to C++ and Java strictly through self-study. After all, you can't go back to college every time a new language comes out! But I admit that's doing it the hard way.

(I take it back, I took a Pascal lab once. Utter waste of time, learned more on my own, which is why I forgot about it. Anyone remember Pascal?)

But if we're ranting, bad teachers are one of my pet peeves. From what I hear from my kids it sounds like they do very little in school any more but watch movies and make collages of American History... we're so doomed.

I also don't get the Guitar Hero thing, being an actual real-world musician... my stepson loves the game so I asked him if he'd like a real Fender Strat and amp for Christmas. Naah, not interested, he'd rather play the game.

In Washington D.C ... Elliot Spitzer got away with usin' Federal funding for his prostitution addiction. It caused the Madame that ran the place to kill herself and I'm sure, tarnished the lives of others.

Just 'cause Obama pulled out a land slide victory, you still have racist haters attackin' minorities ...

And lastly ... it's Friday, I've been at work since 7am on a conference call with the UK office and they didn't have the decency to buy me breakfast.

In Washington D.C ... Elliot Spitzer got away with usin' Federal funding for his prostitution addiction. It caused the Madame that ran the place to kill herself and I'm sure, tarnished the lives of others.

Just 'cause Obama pulled out a land slide victory, you still have racist haters attackin' minorities ...

And lastly ... it's Friday, I've been at work since 7am on a conference call with the UK office and they didn't have the decency to buy me breakfast.

Did you read about how when G. W. Bush and Obama first met, Bush used hand sanitizer after shaking hands with the young upstart. Obama said Bush then offered O some, which he accepted in order to be polite.